14 DAY TRIAL // StatCounter has released its data on browser usage in September. The trends are generally the same, but the company underlines that this is the first time that IE has fallen below the 50 percent mark.
Also notable is the rise of Google Chrome which has more than three times the market share it had last year in September.
Firefox, in the meantime, saw a slight bump, but overall seems to have stabilized at around 31 percent of the market.
It must be noted that StatCounter only looks at page views not unique visitors. As such, the numbers reflect how much a certain browser is used not strictly how many users have it installed.
Google Chrome gained almost one percent point from the previous month, reaching 11.54 percent of the overall market. That's up from 10.76 percent in August.
The Google browser saw a more than three fold increase in the past year, growing from 3.69 percent in September 2009. It reached that point in the first year of its existence since Chrome marked its second birthday last month.
Firefox seems to have a stable and dedicated user base. According to the data, Mozilla's browser has hovered around the 31 percent mark for more than a year now. It now sits at 31.5 percent, up from 31.09 percent.
Internet Explorer is show as diving past the 50 percent point for the first time since it was introduced, almost a decade and a half ago. Microsoft's browser has been steadily declining for years now, with the rise of Firefox and, more recently, Chrome.
Interestingly, IE is weaker in Europe than in other parts of the world. Here, it sits at just over 40 percent of the market share. Firefox on the other hand is significantly more popular, being the dominant browser in several countries.